Loving your shadow: the profound message of NDEs
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) give us an overwhelming message: we are loved unconditionally, with every facet of our being, including those we hide out of shame or fear. Even our shadows, our past mistakes, our wounded parts: nothing can exclude us from this total love.
Pure, non-judgmental love
During one of my most intense spiritual experiences, I felt this absolute, unconditional love. A Presence surrounded me, filled me, loved me without expectation or judgment. It was “chemically pure” love, 100% love. Unimaginable for our judgmental minds, but profoundly real.
Since then, I’ve known that my thoughts of guilt or self-judgment aren’t proof that I’m at fault. It’s those thoughts themselves that are the problem, not who I am.
Reconciling with your shadow to welcome others
Rejecting a part of ourselves, however small, often means rejecting others. We project our own rejection onto those who embody what we reject in ourselves. For example, my intolerance of selfishness in others reflected my own difficulty in accepting my own selfish impulses.
Kenneth Ring puts it this way:
“Experiencers teach us to return to love. This love frees us from the prison of judgments, toward ourselves as well as toward others.”
Essential inner healing
We desperately need this inner healing. We often think that love depends on what we show others. But NDEs and the greatest spiritual traditions remind us that we are beings of light and love.
The causes of our hurtful behavior are fear, suffering and unconsciousness. But these things never alter our deepest essence.
Thomas Merton said:
“To say that I am made in God’s image is to say that love is my true identity.”
To love is to make life more beautiful
Marshall Rosenberg, creator of Nonviolent Communication, explained:
“Our fundamental need is to make life more beautiful, from the divine energy within us.”
And it’s by reconnecting to this energy of love that we transform ourselves, and the world around us.
We are loved unconditionally. Even our sexuality
Sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, is often a source of suffering. Several homosexual Emists report that, during their life review, this question was not even raised. Not judged. Not pointed out. I repeat: it wasn’t a subject! Unless the Emist himself or herself brought it up.
Here’s the emblematic testimony of a homosexual woman who grew up in the American South. She was steeped in a rigorist Christian religion, which considers homosexuals to be hated by God and to go to hell for their homosexuality.
She explains, “I was wondering how I could be with God, because I’d always been taught that God threw homosexuals into hell, since they were an abomination. So I asked: I’m a homosexual, will you still love me?
In response, I was caught in a divine embrace full of love and felt an explosion of happiness and joy. Then God said, laughing and with a Southern accent, “You are my child. You are my child. I love you. I love you. I love you.” And he added, ‘Go get ’em!”, as if he were a coach sending a player back onto the field.”
This moving testimony reminds us that even what we think is a barrier to divine love is not. Nothing can separate us from that love.
Jesus and welcoming all shadows
The Gospels are full of stories of Jesus welcoming the excluded:
- The adulteress saved from stoning: “I do not condemn you”.
- Mary Magdalene, beloved and respected prostitute
- The Roman centurion and his homosexual companion
- Zacchaeus, corrupt tax collector, transformed by Jesus’ love
These stories echo what the Emists tell us today: divine love is unconditional, total, without exception.
We are loved unconditionally A universal declaration
Knowing how difficult it can be for us to imagine – let alone accept – this reality of unconditional love, the Emists who drafted the Amsterdam Declaration wished to strongly emphasize this point: “Love is the essence of the universe, and unconditional love is the essence of universal Light. Universal Light is pure Peace, pure Perfection and pure Love. No one can imagine the infinite love of universal Light. And to be clear and to insist: unconditional really means unconditional. It means there are absolutely no conditions attached .
Dare to love yourselfunconditionally, too
True love doesn’t exclude any part of you. It’s inside you, all around you, waiting for you to break down your inner walls.
Love your light, but also your shadows.
For they too are called to the light.
To go further, see also the article There is no judgment after death or this one: You don’t need an NDE to live in love
